The Dead Romantics (21)

“Alice,” Mom chided. “He’s not even in the grave yet.”

“Bless his soul,” Karen lamented, and pulled her glasses down a little to read from the list. I was surprised she could read his handwriting at all—it was revoltingly bad. “One. For my funeral, I would like one thousand wildflowers. Bouquets are to be organized by color.”

A murmur of confusion crossed the room.

A thousand? Why would—oh. Wildflowers, like the ones he picked every Saturday for Mom. I glanced over at her, and she hid a smile as she looked down into her lap. Alice and Carver were blanching at the request—they hadn’t realized its significance.

Why a thousand, though, I didn’t know.

“Two. I want Elvis to perform at my funeral.”

Seaburn murmured to his wife, “Isn’t he dead . . . ?”

“Very,” she replied.

Dad would’ve tsked at that and said, “Only mostly dead,” in that cryptic way of his. Because music was a heartbeat, too, in its own way, and death wasn’t a send-off without some good tunes.

I was beginning to get the worst sort of feeling.

“Three. I want Unlimited Party to supply decorations. I put in the order on January 23, 2001. You can find a receipt in the envelope with this will.” And then Karen Williams took the yellowed receipt out of the envelope.

I remembered Dad once saying, “When I go out, there’ll be streamers and balloons, buttercup. There won’t be any tears.”

My throat tightened. I curled my hands into fists.

Karen put the receipt back, and kept reading, “Four. I want a murder of twelve to fly during the ceremony.”

“A murder?” Alice asked.

“Of crows. Twelve crows,” I translated. The same murder that kept stealing our Halloween decorations, and gave Dad shiny things when he fed them spare corn on the cob, and sat on the old dead oak tree outside of the funeral home whenever a ghost appeared—how were we supposed to catch those birds?

They hated me.

Karen went on. “Five, my final request. Buttercup”—I felt my heart skip at my nickname, and even though Karen was reading, I could hear Dad in the words, the soft love there, the lopsided grin—“I have left a letter to be read aloud at the funeral. Not a moment before—”

The doorbell rang.

Seaburn asked the group, “We’re not expecting anyone else, are we?”

I checked my watch. It was 9:00 p.m. A little late for visitors.

“Could be flowers,” Carver pointed out.

“Or someone canvassing for mayor,” Karen added.

“Our mayor’s a dog. Who would want to run against a dog?”

Mom said, “Florence, you’re closest.”

“Sure,” I replied, and made my way to the front door to answer it.

A letter? What kind of letter did Dad want me to read for his funeral? I didn’t like the sound of that. For all I knew, it could’ve been mortifying stories from my childhood he’d been keeping as blackmail—like the time I got a marble stuck up my nostril and then shoved a marble in the other one because I was afraid my nose wouldn’t look even. Or the time Carver was playing in a coffin and it closed on him. Or the time Alice thought she was a witch and gathered all the stray cats in the neighborhood as her familiars and they ate the neighbor’s canary. He was that kind of person. And he definitely was the kind of person to include a PowerPoint presentation in the letter, too.

And that just made me miss him more. He couldn’t be gone, could he? He—he could still be here. As a ghost. Lingering. He had unfinished business, didn’t he? He hadn’t said goodbye. He couldn’t be gone. I hadn’t talked with him enough, laughed with him enough, soaked in the stories he had and the cryptic wisdom he espoused and—and—

When I opened the door, I didn’t see anyone at first. Just the porch and the moths that fluttered around the porch lights, and the rocky cobblestones that led to the sidewalk, and the soft streetlights and the wind that rushed through the oak trees.

Then a crow cawed in the oak tree out front, and my eyes focused, and barely—barely—I began to make out an outline. Of a shadow. A body—

A man.

A ghost.

My heart leapt into my throat—Dad?

No—it wasn’t. The man was . . . too tall, too broad. Slowly, like adjusting the focus on a pair of binoculars, the shape took form, until I could see most of him, and my eyes traveled up to the face of the towering stranger, framed by dark hair and a chiseled jaw. It only took a moment to recognize who he was—

Well, who he had once been.

I paused. “Benji . . . Andor?”

And he was most definitely dead.





8





Death of a Bachelor


BEN’S GAZE FELL on mine as soon as I said his name. His eyes were dark and wide and—confused. The slightest crease between his eyebrows deepened as he recognized me. “M-Miss Day?”

I slammed the door closed.

Oh, no. Oh no, no, no.

This wasn’t happening. I didn’t see anything. It was a trick of the light. It was my overworked brain. It was— “Florence?” Mom called from the parlor. “Who is it?”

“Um—no one,” I replied, my hand curling tighter around the doorknob. The faintest outline of the figure still stood in the doorway, shadowed in the stained glass. He wasn’t gone. I closed my eyes, and let out a breath. Nothing was there, Florence.